You can be sure that he would never have admitted it. His current attitude doesn't surprise me in the least. Had the police contacted him, he would have sued me for damages in any case, and I would certainly have been forced to explain things in public. It would have been the same situation: my word against his.
So, my assessment—I prejudged, as you say—was that there would be no charges laid against him in all likelihood, and that he would come out of this looking far more credible than I would have.